SAT is not a fair measure of skills

This four-hour test is a tool that college admissions use to compare applicants, one of those applicants soon to be me. While the SAT cannot be abolished immediately, colleges still need to minimize the impact the SAT score has in the admissions process.

According to the College Board website, the SAT is designed “to assess your academic readiness for college” and for “measuring the skills required for success in the 21st century.”

I open my Princeton Review SAT book, and within the very first pages, it says, “The test writers say that the test measures ‘reasoning ability,’¤” but actually, all the SAT measures is how well you take the SAT. It does not reveal how smart a person you are.

The SAT does not measure the skills needed for college, and it certainly does not predict how well I am going to do in college classes. In fact, studies have shown that high school grades are a better predictor of grades in college than an SAT score.

With the national average score at 1,500 out of a possible 2,400, students are still forced to take a test that is written to trick them and prompts them to think that they cannot succeed in college.

What does the SAT measure in a student? Absolutely nothing. To put it bluntly, the College Board is lying. Many argue that colleges need a standardized test to somehow compare students from all over vastly different backgrounds.

I agree that there needs to be a “yardstick” for comparison, but colleges cannot keep relying on an inaccurately marked yardstick simply because they have nothing else.

Charles Murray, a political scientist and a graduate of Harvard University, credits the SAT for taking him from a small town in Iowa to the most prestigious college in the world, yet he says, “If you’re rich, you can buy your kid a high SAT score.”

When it comes to bias in the SAT, the higher the income, the higher the score, an unacceptable trend in a test that boasts equality for all high school students.

Originally, the tests were not as stressed in college admissions. Lawrence University’s dean of admissions said, “Back when kids just got a good night’s sleep and took the SAT, it was a leveler that helped you find the diamond in the rough.”

Today, parents can enroll their kids in a Kaplan course, hire private tutors or even a “diagnostician who will classify your child as learning disabled and therefore eligible to take the SATs without time limits.”

In 1923, Carl Brighams helped create an IQ test for American Army recruits, looking for the most intelligent soldiers. He published “A Study of American Intelligence,” a book that blamed “racial mixture” for the decline of American education. The College Board hired him to create a test to be used in a wider range of colleges. Later, Harvard required that very test of all of its applicants.

The president of Harvard, James Conant, encouraged the nation to grasp the standardized tests to allow students from all backgrounds to attend Ivy League schools. Otherwise, the Ivy Leagues were only selecting students from private high schools such as Exeter. This test was dubbed the SAT. Conant pushed it to find the most “intellectually talented” students from across the nation simply because he could not continue solely accepting rich kids from the Northeast. He wanted the brightest, regardless of race, location or income. Ironically, the poor are the ones who are now receiving the low scores and the rich kids still rule. So much for the great equalizer exam.

Amanda Chan

In 2001, the University of California considered cutting the requirement of an SAT score in the admissions process, mainly due to its proven favoritism of privileged children.
A study had found that there was no significant correlation between freshman year grades and SAT scores, so the school resolved to drop the SAT. The ETS, the group that makes the tests, panicked and added more sections to the SAT in order to save its biggest client.

In 2002, the College Board released a study that proved that high school grades and SAT subject tests made the SAT score insignificant when predicting success in college.
The SAT is a waste of time. It is nothing but a packet of tricky multiple-choice questions that costs a lot to take. Privileged kids get higher scores.

John Katzman, founder and president of the Princeton Review, phrases it well: “The SAT is a scam; it has never measured anything. And it continues to measure nothing.”

With colleges terrified of letting go of this nationally standardized — but very broken — test, America needs to at least minimize the importance of it in the admissions process.

Amanda Chan is a junior at Central York High School and a Patriot-News Davenport Fellow.